See it here: https://issuu.com/bhamkidsandfamily/docs/bluff_park_neighborhood_reader_-_march_april_2026/29

It’s true. I am grumpy. Always have been. Probably always will be.

BUT.

I’m less grumpy than I have ever been. Believe me.

When we moved into this house in 2016, it was so important to me that the property maintain a neat, physical appearance, including the backyard that no one sees. Of course, everyone knows by now that how we are perceived from the outside holds little to no value and, therefore, had no bearing on my decision to keep my backyard tidy.

I needed it for me. Organization and neatness and control and a job well done.

At any given time, toys, bikes, sweatshirts, socks, and fallen tree branches could fill up a truck bed. If one kid got a popsicle, the whole neighborhood got a popsicle, and the plastic remains of said popsicles decorated my weeds.

All of it had to go immediately upon their placement, and if they weren’t disposed of in a timely manner, Grumpy Gills came to life in all his fury. The only piece that was allowed its time to simmer were the thirty-seven tons of leaves that settle in every Fall. I never bothered with it until the following Spring because I swore I wouldn’t do it more than once a year.

See? Wisdom can still nestle in a young grouch’s noggin.

My point is… I’ve relaxed.

Maybe I’m growing old and tired. Maybe I’m growing apathetic and can’t find much purpose. Maybe I’m even growing lazy.

Maybe it’s all of them combined and some smart doctor somewhere could scan my brain and print me out a nice, color-coded pie chart of what’s really going on up there. But I’ll tell you what I think it is.

I’m going to die one day.

Perhaps to the untrained, cheerful heart, this is a pessimistic view. While that description of me may not be altogether inaccurate, the comprehension of this particular veracity is the most freeing and optimistic perspective that has ever materialized in my foolish, fragile mind.

These days, backyard tasks are fewer and further between, taking a back seat to the most important ones that all happen on the trampoline. Number Four wants me to jump with him. I can tell you right now… It’s the worst. It hurts my body, but he loves it, and I can bounce him up into my arms while he laughs uncontrollably until he asks me to do it again.

When he’s done, we lie down and watch the sky. It’s my favorite thing to do, watch the sky. The tops of the trees meet it, and I think to myself that they could be the same height.

All the while, real “work” awaits me inside.

Unfortunately, my oldest will likely remember one day that the amount of “fairness” that existed between him and the youngest was never equal, and that instead of a stairstep descent, it was more like an inverted exponential slope.

I didn’t do it on purpose, Buddy. Daddy just didn’t know.